NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump had more frequent exchanges with reporters during his first 100 days in office than any of his six predecessors, a study has found.
Trump's 129 interactions through news conferences or interviews averaged nearly two each workday, according to Martha Joynt Kumar, director of the White House Transition Project. Trump exceeded the pace of his first term in 2017, when he had 89 such meetings. The study was released Thursday.
President Bill Clinton was the only other president to hit triple figures during his first 100 days in office. Kumar's records date back to President Ronald Reagan's first term.
Trump's favored venue is short question-and-answer session with reporters, 40 of them from the Oval Office. “With regular coverage by cable networks, particularly Fox News and C-SPAN, Trump used the setting to show what decisions he was making and explained the reasons he took action,” Kumar said in her report.
Partly as a result, polls indicate a large number of Americans seem to know what the president is doing, even if they don't necessarily agree with it.
The presidential access comes at a time that the administration is battling with the press on several levels. The Associated Press has sued Trump, for example, because Trump has blocked its journalists from regular access to Oval Office or Air Force One events. He's seeking to slash federal subsidies for public media because he believes NPR of PBS coverage is biased in favor of liberals.
Through press secretary Karoline Leavitt, the administration has brought in more reporters from conservative news sources, along with podcasters and influencers.
Trump gave 26 interviews during his first 100 days back in office, Kumar said. Of those, 16 were to Fox News or other conservative news outlets and podcasters.
By contrast, former President Joe Biden had 87 reporter interactions during the first 100 days of his administration, in 2021. Reagan, with 23 exchanges, had the fewest in 1981, but he was recovering from an assassination attempt much of that time.
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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social
David Bauder, The Associated Press
